Rotary mower with roller. The best hand push mowers in 2023

The best hand push mowers in 2023

Our round up of tried and tested hand push lawn mowers.

If you’re looking for a straightforward lawn trim, then a traditional hand push mower could be the garden tool for you. With no battery, fuel or electricity to worry about, manual lawn mowers are a more environmentally-friendly option.These pedestrian powered machines are pushed along the lawn and the cylinder blades rotate to trim the grass as you move. They do require a little more push power than automatic mowers, and walking briskly will give a better cut so you’ll get a workout and burn calories each time you mow. And although a push mowers isn’t for every garden – they’re best for small to medium-sized (up to 250m²) lawns on flat ground with few bumps, the exercise will help keep you fit and they’re generally much more of a budget option compared to their high-tech counterparts. They’re kind to your neighbours too, as they’re much quieter than powered mowers. Cylinder mowers generally give a smoother, sharper finish than rotary mowers and their rear roller creates elegant stripes. Usually small, they’re easy to store and light enough to manoeuvre well around the garden,

If you’re not sure which type of lawn mower is best for you, take a look at our reviews of the best electric lawn mowers and the best cordless lawn mowers.

Best hand push lawn mowers at a glance

Our expertise

To help you find the right hand push mower, we tested a range of these traditional machines. Everymower has a detailed list of pros and cons for clarity and has been rated according to setting up and storage, ease of handling, performance and value for money. Every mower in our round-up has scored a minimum of three out of five stars, so you can buy with confidence.

In every review we award outstanding products our coveted Best Buy award. To see these and the others we recommend, browse our pick of the best cordless lawn mowers, below.

Best Buy hand push lawn mowers

Webb 30cm Autoset sidewheel

Our rating: 4.8 out of 5

• Comfortable to push and hold
• Cuts all grass smoothly and tightly
• Front loading grass bag catches clippings well
• Quiet

Easy to put together and use this simple hand push mower is comfortable, thanks to rubber grip handles, even when pushing over longer grass. It has six cylinder blades offering four cutting heights that are easy to change. The mower cuts from 40mm right down to 10mm, so it gives a precise, neat clip but also cuts longer grass well. It’s quiet, copes with even bumpy ground easily and the 17 litre front collector was the best at collecting clippings in our test. We gave it a BBC GardenersWorld Magazine Best Buy for the best budget push mower in 2023.

Gardena Comfort Hand Cylinder 400C

Our rating: 4.5 out of 5

• Very easy height-of-cut adjuster
• Large grass collector that catches clippings well
• Feels sturdy and well designed
• Cuts well

While there is more to assemble with the Gardena push mower, our tests found the instructions for putting it together clear to understand. The shaped handle was comfortable to use and folds down simply for easy storage. Our experts were impressed with the four easy to adjust cutting heights displayed on a clearly visible scale. The grass collector has a 49 litre capacity but is sold separately. This mower is guaranteed for two years and we gave this a BBC GardenersWorld Magazine Best Buy for the best push mower all round in 2022.

Cobra HM381

Our rating: 4.5 out of 5

• Compact and light
• Quiet
• Comfortable
• Easy to adjust the height of cut
• Good value

We awarded this a BBC GardenersWorld Magazine Best Buy for the best value push mower in 2022 and found it easy to put together with clear instructions. It’s compact and lightweight making it easy to push and operate and the handle is padded for extra comfort. There are four cutting heights ranging from 13-38mm, which can be simply adjusted and a 26 litre grass collector is included. It comes with a two year warranty.

Webb WEH18

Our rating: 4.5 out 5

• Quiet
• Nine heights of cut
• Wide cut
• Very simple height-of-cut adjustment
• Tackles long grass
• Effective front grass collector

Awarded a BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Best Buy for the best for performance, this traditional cylinder mower design has a solid, heavy rear roller and a 22 litre collection box. The instructions for assembling it are clear and it’s light, easy to manoeuvre and quiet to use. There’s a generous choice of nine cutting heights, which are easily adjusted and range from 25-76mm, which is the highest in our test and ensures it handles long grass well. The front-loading grass collector on this model collects clippings well and it comes with a warranty of two years.

The best of the rest

Although some models didn’t quite achieve a BBC Gardeners’ World Magazine Best Buy award, they still have features that make them worth recommending. Browse our pick of the best of the rest on test.

Husqvarna HiCut 64

Our rating: 4.25 out of 5

• Comfortable handle and adjustable heights
• Light and easy to manoeuvre
• Good, efficient cut, and tackles longer grass
• Height of cut adjustment difficult
• Roller doesn’t touch the ground
• Grass collector sold separately

This Husqvarna hand mower requires more assembly than most and tools are required plus, our testers found that the instructions could have been clearer. However, the mower is comfortable to use with handy flexible handle heights and it’s a quick and efficient mower. Testers weren’t keen on the height of cut adjuster. The grass collector has a large capacity of 45 litres but it’s sold separately and doesn’t collect all the clippings, especially when windy. It comes with a one year warranty but if you register, this is extended to two years.

Einhell GE-HM 38 S-F

Our rating: 4.25 out of 5

• Lightweight
• Quiet
• Simple to change height of cut
• Adjustable handle height
• Grass collector doesn’t catch all the clippings and they fall out when emptying
• Not as smooth a mow as some

Our expert testers liked that the handle on this manual lawn mower had a choice of two heights and that it was padded for extra comfort while in use. Clear instructions are included and assembling the model is relatively simple. There are four cutting heights to choose from which can be easily swapped using a lever. The grass collector is included and has a 26 litre capacity. It’s guaranteed for two years.

How to choose a push mower

Before you choose a push mower think about the following:

Have you got the right lawn?Cylinder mowers need an even surface for the scissor action of the blades to work well, so your lawn must be fairly bump free and 250m² or below. Simpler shapes are easier, unless you opt for a compact model with a smaller cutting width that can be manoeuvred more easily around trees and island beds and under shrubs.

Do you like mowing the lawn?Hand push mowers take more effort than powered mowers, but they are easier to push if the grass isn’t too long. Cylinder mowers work best on fairly short grass and will struggle or not cut long grass at all. So you need to cut regularly or choose a mower with a high height of cut to let you catch up if you miss a mow now and then.

Can you look after your mower?Cylinder blades need regular checking and adjusting to ensure a precise cut and prevent the mower chewing the grass rather than cutting it. Adjustment isn’t difficult, but it’s worth bearing in mind if you’re not mechanically minded.

Do you need a grass collector?Most mowers come with one, but some are sold separately and nearly all the grass collectors in our test failed to catch clippings well, particularly when windy. Although front collectors work best, they block your view. If you’re happy to mow regularly (twice a week in the growing season), you may not need one at all and can simply let the short clippings fall down onto the grass and act as a mulch.

Do you have storage?These mowers must be kept indoors to prevent the blades rusting, so if storage space is tight, choose a model that’s light enough to hang up or has folding handles.

Cut in long straight lines, walking briskly – the faster you walk, the better the mower will cut.

To create stripes, mow around the edge of the lawn first, then start in one corner, mowing up and down. When you finish a stripe, turn and line up the mower with the completed stripe, as

When adjusting or cleaning the mower, stand it on a flat surface with a block in front of the wheels to prevent ir rolling forwards.

How we tested push mowers

All the mowers in our test are cylinder-type, with blades and a rear roller. Each mower was unpacked, assembled snd tested on a flat, circular lawn and on a sloping, less even, shaped lawn to see how ell they performed. They were assessed according to the following criteria with equal marks attributed to each:

• Setup and Storage. Assessed the ease of assembly and clarity of instructions and how easy the mower is to store.
• Handling. Focused on comfort and ease of use, handle height adjustment and how to change the height of cut, its weight, the effort needed and manoeuvrability.
• Cutting performance. Looked at cutting width, the range of cutting heights, collection capacity and the quality of cut.
• Value for Money. Considered all the above as well as quality and design, warranty and price.

For more information on our testing process see How We Review.

This review was last updated in May 2023. We apologise if anything has changed in price or availability.

The Best Reel Mower for Your (Small) Lawn

We’ve reviewed this guide, added competitors, eliminated older models, and reconfirmed our decisions on our picks.

Reel mowers aren’t for everyone. They’re designed for small, flat lawns, and they take some effort to push around. But they provide exceptional cut quality and a completely unplugged mowing experience, so they offer things no other mower can. We think the best one is the Scotts 2000-20 20-Inch Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower.

For the healthiest grass

The Scotts makes the cleanest cut, has the widest cutting path, and jams the least of any reel mower, and its unusually tall 3-inch max cutting height makes it more versatile for different grass types.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 145.

During initial tests with a golf course grounds crew and in years of follow up use, the Scotts-branded mower has the best cut quality of any of the mowers we’ve tested, and its unusually tall maximum cutting height of 3 inches makes it a versatile choice for different types of lawns and grasses. It has a 20-inch cutting swath—the widest available—and at 34 pounds, it’s light and easy to maneuver. It was also the only mower in the group that didn’t jam during testing.

Good cut, less elegant

This mower cuts almost as well as our main pick and has a taller cutting height, but it’s bulkier (making it harder to turn around) and more expensive.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 250.

If our main pick is sold out or otherwise unavailable, we also really like the Fiskars 18-Inch StaySharp Max Reel Mower. Its a solid mower with a 4-inch cutting height is higher than any other reel mower’s. In testing the Fiskars cut well, but it wasn’t on par with the Scotts and didn’t handle tall grass quite as well. It’s also heavier and bulkier, making it more of a chore to turn around, it also costs more than the Scotts.

For the healthiest grass

The Scotts makes the cleanest cut, has the widest cutting path, and jams the least of any reel mower, and its unusually tall 3-inch max cutting height makes it more versatile for different grass types.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 145.

Good cut, less elegant

This mower cuts almost as well as our main pick and has a taller cutting height, but it’s bulkier (making it harder to turn around) and more expensive.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 250.

Why you should trust us

We spoke with Jason Kruse, assistant professor of environmental horticulture and turfgrass specialist at the University of Florida. As his bio states, Kruse’s responsibilities include “managing the University of Florida turfgrass Envirotron teaching and research facility, planning and implementing turfgrass educational field days and leading the statewide turfgrass teaching design team.” The guy knows a lot about grass.

For testing, we enlisted the aid of the grounds crew of the Diamond Hawk Golf Course in Cheektowaga, New York, a bunch of people who are serious about mowing. While using the mowers, they picked up cut blades to carefully examine how cleanly the mowers cut; they also bent down to compare the color of the turf after each one made a pass, and pushed all the mowers around on various lengths of grass.

Here at Wirecutter, we’ve been covering lawn equipment since 2014. As for the specific topic of grass-cutting implements, we’ve written extensive guides to both lawn mowers and string trimmers in addition to reel mowers.

Since the first version of this guide, we’ve recommended the Scotts as well as the runner-up Fiskars, and we’ve continued to use both models in assorted locations, paying attention to their long-term performance and any ongoing maintenance needed.

Who should get a reel mower

Before getting a reel mower, you should be aware of their pros and cons. Simply put, a reel mower is not a direct replacement for a regular mower.

As one of our long-term testers said, “I love [my reel mower]. It makes mowing feel more like a pleasant way to spend time outside and less like something I need to grit my teeth and power through.” On the other hand, a second long-term tester stated that he regrets purchasing a reel mower and has “frequently considered selling it to get a cheap electric mower.”

Reel mowers are better for the lawn’s health. They snip the grass blades like scissors, while rotary mowers tend to shred grass blades. According to University of Florida assistant professor of environmental horticulture Jason Kruse, “The scissor-cutting action of the reel mowers results in less damage to the leaf tissue, which in turn puts the plants under less stress.” He continued, “They lose less water, are less susceptible to disease, and generally look better when cut with a reel mower.”

Reel mowers are also good for the operator’s health. Because you hand-push the mower and it isn’t motorized, it takes effort to use, especially if you have a large lawn. Keep in mind that the turning wheels are what rotate the blades, which adds to the resistance. So the task is not as simple as, say, pushing an empty furniture dolly, where you’re pushing the wheels and nothing else. According to a Livestrong.com article, (which in turn credits Harvard Medical School, among others) a person weighing 175 pounds would burn approximately 251 calories by pushing a reel mower—which the article refers to as a hand mower—for 30 minutes. This is 51 calories more than someone weighing 185 pounds pushing a mower with a powered blade for the same amount of time.

Reel mowers also require minimal maintenance and are much, much quieter than regular mowers. Aside from lubricating and sharpening the blades every few years, you don’t have a lot of upkeep to do on a reel mower. As for the noise, many users of reel mowers cite the gentle snipping sound the tool makes as a key benefit. Gas mowers, on the other hand, require gas, regular tune-ups, oil changes, and winterizing. They’re also noisy and smelly. As one of our long-term testers said, “I love [my reel mower]. It makes mowing feel more like a pleasant way to spend time outside and less like something I need to grit my teeth and power through.”

But for a reel mower to be practical, you need a fairly small lawn. Anyone with more than a quarter acre (roughly 10,000 square feet) will find weekly mowing with a reel mower exhausting. One long-term tester stated that he regrets purchasing a reel mower for the size of his lawn and has “frequently considered selling it to get a cheap electric mower.”. In contrast, another of our long-term testers has approximately 1,000 square feet of lawn, and mowing takes her about 20 minutes.

A reel mower works best with a strict adherence to a regular cutting schedule. If grass gets overgrown, a reel mower will merely push it down and roll right over it, so if you tend to go a while between mowings, you should stick with a regular push mower. One long term tester had to wait so long for the reel mower to arrive that once it got there, the grass had grown so high they needed to hire someone to cut their grass. And the necessary diligence goes beyond the schedule: Reel mowers can’t mow over twigs and leaves as gas mowers can, so additional attentiveness to pre-mow lawn cleanup is required, as well.

Reel mowers are troublesome on sloped or bumpy lawns. The torque that turns the blades comes from the wheels as you roll them along the ground. On an uneven surface, the wheels lose contact with the ground as they bounce or as the weight shifts on a slope. As one of our long-term testers put it, “Small dips can lead to grass getting missed, so I often end up mowing from two or three different angles to try and get it all.”

In fact, the results in general may not be what you expect. One of our long-term testers said that their mower “often totally misses taller strands of grass” and that they “have to go back and snip those with a pair of shears.” Also, on most reel mowers, the blades are inboard of the wheels, so you’ll have a wider gap of unmowed grass against a fence or a stone wall.

How we picked and tested

To figure out how to pick the best reel mower, we spoke to Scott Dunbar, superintendent of Diamond Hawk Golf Course in Cheektowaga, New York. He explained that reel mowers can cut much closer to the ground than rotary mowers. At the golf course, the crew uses reel mowers to cut greens and approaches but uses gas-powered rotary mowers for the rough. But the average homeowner isn’t cutting the lawn for use as a putting green—in fact, cutting your lawn too low is terrible for its health. Turf experts suggest never cutting off more than a third of your grass’s length; cutting too close to the ground can cause the grass to dry out and get scorched in the summer. This means that a mower’s minimum cutting height isn’t a useful measurement, since you’re unlikely to use that setting.

The maximum cutting height was a crucial detail. We used this spec as our primary factor in eliminating mowers from contention. Few reel mowers are able to get above 2½ inches, which may not be good for your lawn. “[Cutting height] is one of the primary complaints I have against the majority of reel mowers that are marketed for home use. Most residential grasses (both cool- and warm-season) have recommended heights of cut that are at the upper limit or even exceed the height of cut that is possible with some of the mowers,” said University of Florida turfgrass specialist Kruse. “While it would be possible to use the mower, the long-term health of the turf could suffer significantly,” he continued.

Other factors were also important:

• How easy is the mower to adjust?
• How hard is it to push?
• How wide is it?
• How much does it weigh?
• What have other reviewers said about it?

We took our final four mowers to a golf course. There the grounds crew helped us adjust the blades to the exact same standard they used on their mowers so that the blades could cleanly slice a piece of paper. Over the next three hours, we pushed all four mowers back and forth on different-height grasses. On hand were course superintendent Scott Dunbar, a member of the grounds crew, a mechanic who maintains the course equipment, and an equipment salesman who happened to be at the course that day. These guys are all turfgrass experts who deal with grass and mowing equipment every day. They really took to the task of comparing these mowers, examining every aspect closely and answering all our questions about turf and cut quality.

Our pick: Scotts 2000-20 20-Inch Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower

For the healthiest grass

The Scotts makes the cleanest cut, has the widest cutting path, and jams the least of any reel mower, and its unusually tall 3-inch max cutting height makes it more versatile for different grass types.

Buying Options

At the time of publishing, the price was 145.

The Scotts 2000-20 20-Inch Classic Push Reel Lawn Mower is the reel mower to get. Of the tested mowers, it offered the cleanest cut and the easiest adjustments, and it was the only one that didn’t jam. It also has a wide, 20-inch cutting swath—the widest we found—as well as height adjustments between 1 and 3 inches, which is a more versatile range than we saw on almost all of the other available reel mowers. At 34 pounds, it’s light and easy to turn around at the end of each mowing row, but it’s heavy enough that it doesn’t bounce around on slightly uneven turf.

The quality of the cut excelled against the competition. When our lawn experts were going back and forth with the mowers on a variety of grasses and lengths, they noticed that the Scotts model would leave a swath of totally trimmed grass with each blade snipped evenly across, no ragged edges to be seen. In contrast, the other mowers would leave a bunch of blades sticking up like chimneys after a house fire, requiring the testers to back up and go over the area again. The Scotts mower also never jammed up during testing, whereas all of the other mowers did.

The Scotts 2000-20 also snipped a wider path than most of the others. The Scotts is a 20-inch-wide mower, the widest size available (the measurement refers to the blade width, not the overall width). We tested another 20-inch model, the Lee Valley 20″ Mower, but that one was harder to push, and its cut quality was worse.

Our testers also gave the Scotts 2000-20 high marks for overall usability. At 34 pounds, it lands in the middle of our test group in weight but manages to hit the sweet spot between maneuverability and stability. The Fiskars StaySharp Max is heavier and harder to turn around at the end of a mowing row; by contrast, the lighter Lee Valley model bounced around on uneven ground and left a ragged cut as a result.

All of the adjustments on the Scotts mower are easy to make. For cutting height, it has two levers, one for each wheel. One other model we tested, the 16-inch Great States 415-16, required us to unbolt it each time we wanted to change the cutting height. Also, the height settings on the Scotts model are accurate; the 1-inch setting on the Fiskars, in contrast, actually cut much lower, practically scalping the lawn, before we readjusted it to a higher setting.

The Scotts 2000-20 has a cutting range of 1 to 3 inches. The vast majority of reel mowers top out around 2 inches, so we appreciated the ability to go taller, either for the health of the grass or for a less manicured look. A DIY Network article lists the ideal cutting heights for a variety of warm- and cool-weather grasses, and the capabilities of the Scotts land nicely in the strike zone for every grass mentioned. Our runner-up, the Fiskars StaySharp Max, has an even higher maximum cutting height at 4 inches, but it’s a much heavier mower with more difficult maneuvering, and it doesn’t cut as nicely.

The Scotts is easy to assemble, and doesn’t require any tools. The bolts that attach the handle have large plastic wing nuts, so tightening by hand is simple. If you ever need to take your mower apart—to fit it into a compact space like a car trunk or a small storage area—we found that the Scotts was easy enough to disassemble, too. You might need pliers to remove the small C-clips that attach the handle to the body of the mower, but otherwise it shouldn’t be a hassle.

Scotts stands behind their products. Erin Price, then Wirecutter’s Audience Development Manager, had a wheel fall off her Scotts push mower and the company replaced the entire mower for her. She told us, “I love my reel mower and perhaps love it even more now that the company was so helpful.”

It has performed well in long term testing. Two other Wirecutter staff members, who both happen to be women, also have Scotts Classics in their personal tool sheds, and they appreciate the mower’s simplicity and ease of use. Senior Photo Editor Rozette Rago had never used a reel mower before picking up the Scotts for her small, flat yard in LA, and found it quick to get used to. It was easy to figure out for two people who have never used it before. Wirecutter Producer Beth Niegelsky, who has used both the Fiskars and the Scotts, prefers the latter, “ I actually like the Scotts significantly more because it is SO much lighter.” She explained, “With the Fiskars, I basically couldn’t mow the hill of my front yard without feeling like I was doing something dangerous. It’s basically no problem with the Scotts.”

Senior Software Development Engineer Joshua Brewer had the Scotts for three years and recently replaced it for our lawn mower pick. Throughout his three years of usage, he highlighted that the Scott was “kinda fun to use.” He appreciated that it was easy to storetash, didn’t require fuel, and was quieter than a traditional lawn mower. However, the Scotts did squeak despite thorough maintenance, required multiple passes on his lawn, and his foam handle disintegrated after the first year. Overall, Brewer says The Scotts 2000-20 worked, but was much more laborious to use with a lush and dense lawn and worked a lot better when the lawn was more sparse. He’s much happier with the Ego LM2135SP now.

Supervising Editor Josh Lyon also has a Scotts and said there are bumpy parts of his lawn that he needs to go over one or two additional times, but that “the mower is so light and has such a smooth roll that even with the extra passes it takes half the time to do our entire lawn than with the gas-powered mower we used to have.” Overall, Lyon is very happy with the Scotts and says he’ll never go back to a gas mower.

Finally, even though it wasn’t a major factor in our decision, testers liked how the Scotts looked better than the other mowers (some found the Fiskars model’s oddball form to be off-putting). The Scotts 2000-20 is covered by a two-year warranty, and user reviews suggest that the manufacturer, American Lawn Mower, issues free replacement parts whenever a problem crops up.

Flaws but not dealbreakers

We analyzed the negative Комментарии и мнения владельцев at Amazon and found that most of the complaints center on the aluminum handle breaking, a plastic gear in the mechanism stripping out, or simply the realization that a reel mower is not the right choice for the owner’s particular lawn.

We investigated the plastic-gear complaint by removing the wheel of the Scotts mower and taking a look at the gear. As you can see in the photo above, it’s a pretty robust gear with deep teeth, and it interfaces with the teeth on the inside of the plastic wheel. The wheels turn as you push, and those teeth turn the plastic gear, which rotates the blades. Stripping it out is an issue to be aware of, but under proper use, the gear shouldn’t be a problem. And if it becomes one, replacing the gear is a 10-minute repair job. While it would be nice if both the wheel and the gear were made of metal, such a design would likely add money to the price tag and a significant amount of weight to the mower.

One of our long-term testers also noted that when the Scotts arrived, many of the screws holding the handle together were loose and fell out within a month. Once they were replaced, no further problems surfaced.

A close reading of the user complaints suggests that owners who were using the Scotts mower on tall or tough Southern grass had the most problems, but such difficulties are likely to be common among all push mowers and not just the Scotts.